Multiplayer on 7 Days to Die

[OJsDad]

I made it to Budd's new digs.  So I'll be there for awhile.  Budd was talking about exploring.  I'll head to the lake tomorrow and see about setting up a better base there, not that he has a bad one where he is now. 

[Cyrano]

I'm camped in one of Budd's old digs that he affectionately dubs "the pharmacy".  Great fun being asked, as you slowly make your way to a location, "so, do you see the searchlights yet?"

And then you see them.  And the rest of the fort, including the elaborate network of underground tunnels.

Good stuff.

[-budd-]

INTENSE.....all i can say....INTENSE.......just had the most massive horde battle.......5 hours of game time and 500 rounds of ammo and 70 arrows and 100 nails[yes i have a nail gun now, thats how desperate it got...WOW. Sorry OJ had to use all the ammo except for the 7.62. 100+ zombies i'd guess, they just kept coming...know why......those Fuc*ing screamers, as long as there alive and have a bead on you and keep screaming they just keep coming. 5 damn screamers in this group, finally got a close up view of one, look just like Alma from the F.E.A.R games, you hear that bitch scream.....YOU RUN. Funny thing is i was doing alright, the last half dozen got me after i got the last screamer. Dogs. hornets, those little monkey running ones, thing is it wasnt a feral horde, no cops and no big uglies....there was just too many. I 'm just down in my tunnel base filling the forge after moving everything from the roof, already made all the ammo. Got one escape tunnel opened up so i'm good or so i think. Suddenly the screaming starts, if you've heard it you know what i mean.I run to one of my hatches above ground and i can see them pounding on it so i go to my other hatch and just open it up, big mistake, big, big, big mistake, soon as the hatch opens they start dropping in. This tunnel is sloped down from the surface, no stairs down just a slope. So i start going to work with the 44....i'm feeling fine, all ammo'd up banging away. They just kept coming down the hatch, so i have to start backing down my tunnel banging away with the 44, funny thing is as there dropping the bodies are sliding down the slope past me, more on that later.This is close confines, no missing going on here. All i can say is i had 70 rounds of 44. that ran dry switched to smg, still backing down the slope, fuc*ing thing breaks, switch to the 9 and keep banging away. What i didn't know was the bodies sliding past me weren't all dead, so guess what there getting up behind me....its O shit time. I have my miners hat on with the light on, that thing gets knocked off my head, didn't know that was possible. There's torches so its not completely dark and i turn to bang away at the ones behind me and clear a path. This is a long slope to the surface, so I run down to my chests grab ammo, repair my smg, grab health and a dose of AB because i'm infected. The zombies have trouble with the slope so it buys me time. I reload and go back to the slope, im banging away with the SMG working upwards to try and close that damn hatch.......No way...too many ... and too far. My SMG breaks again and i'm down to crossbow bolts and nails from the nail gun. I say screw this and go check the other hatch, cant hear anything because of the screaming and i dont see and arms banging on the hatch so i open it...yup.....down they come...I manage to shoot the first few as when i ran by my chests i repaired the SMG again, i get that hatch closed. Plan C time, i use one of the doors to the building to get outside. i go over to the hatch thats open and try to get it closed, im down to just crossbow bolts at this time and almost 4 hours of game time has passed. I've capped a few of the screamers and i dont hear any screaming, so i think its mop up time....haven't died yet. I start leading them off and shooting crossbow bolts into them. I clear that group up and go for the hatch to close it......the bitch senses me and the screaming starts again....i capped her right quick. I'm feeling good, the worst is over, i start checking the damage. I run up my slope tunnel  checking things out and the little zombie bastards had themselves a tunnel. Must of had trouble with the slope and to get to me they started banging away at the dirt and made a tunnel. So once i run up the slope past the tunnel of course they start coming after me, this is where the last half dozen kill me. I managed to keep a couple screens i'll post at the end. That was one intense gaming moment.

OJ everything is moved to the tunnels, i didn't repair everything yet but it is closed up. I moved all the supplies from the roof and i put a new bag for me down in the tunnel so you can pick up both from the roof, again i couldnt remember which one was mine so i left it.I'll have to make some more ammo.

Here a few screens from the tunnel battle, wish i had my video program running that would of been good. Looking at the screens time stamps guess it was closer to a 12 hour battle...WOW. You can see in the 4th screen down im getting close to the hatch to try to close it and then in the 5th screen im backing down again, the bodies were just sliding past me. The last 2 screens are when i was checking damage and ran up the slope and they come out of the tunnel they made, you can see it at about 1 o clock, i'm trying desperately to get out of the hatch, didn't make it. You can also see in screens 1 and 2 the light from my helmet and then in the rest no light, damn thing got knocked off my head sometime during the battle.

[ArizonaTank]

The hordes have been pretty much non-stop for me.  When I finish one...the next one starts.  My only defense now is escape.  Pretty scary running through the woods in the pitch black, pursued by a pack of zombie dogs....

Eventually my reinforced concrete tower will be ready, and I will stay and fight.   

Going to try to turn off my forges based on the old idea that they are drawn to heat and activity. 

[OJsDad]

WOW, looks like I had to signoff a little too soon.  I'll be on sometime later today.  I'll grab both bags from the roof and bring them down to the cave.  I'll lay one out an put the other in a chest for whoever else may come down this way.

[OJsDad]

Hey Budd.  I was on for about 10 minutes just now.  I grabbed both sleeping bags that were on the roof and laid one out in the tunnel.  The I've still go, as all of the chests down there are locked.  I wasn't sure if you wanted me to start making brass and lead, so I left it be for now.  I home to get on later and try and find the lake. 

[-budd-]

I think if your going to base, spread out. This base isnt as spread out, i couldnt get away from being sensed and hunted. I've already had hordes spawn inside the fence perimeter of the power station, and the hordes have come day or night, the night ones have been a lot bigger. The heat signature is the thing ,the exit they came pouring in was closest to my burning forge, just never thought there would be that many. 5 screamers, if you hear the scream i believe your being hunted and she will keep screaming and they will keep coming.I think stout defenses will buy you time but depending on the numbers and if you can get the screamers quickly is how long until your breached. You can see by the shots how deep my tunnel is, didn't matter, as soon as i heard the scream i was hunted. I'll try to get a screenshot of the screamer.

[-budd-]

sorry, keep forgetting the damn things start locked. I'm jumping on, but OJ might not be safe hanging out with me ;)

[OJsDad]

BUdd, I was hit with some mini hoards when I was by myself at the Pharmabase, and my level was only 5 or 6 at the time.  I'm wondering if the game just getting harder as the days go on.  So I'll stay close for now.

My thoughts are I'll go discover the lake area and if I think I can, I'll start to fortify it.  As you asked before, can the walkers come across the lake somehow or can we bottleneck them on the land bridge.  I'll go with the assumption that they cannot come across the lake, and start with fortifying the land bridge.  Then starting a tunnel down.  Once down, I'll get a sleeping bag, forge, and fire pit in there.  If I start an underground facility there, how far down should I go, 15 blocks or so. 

Also, I can make concreate, but I cannot make cement.  So if you can either make some and stock it up for me and or find me a book on making cement, I'd like to fortify the land bridge from the beginning with concrete. 

[OJsDad]

Question, the forge in the tunnel under the power plant, do you want me to start making scrap brass and lead.  Where do the raw materials for making those items come from.

[JasonPratt]

The game definitely gets harder as it goes, and this server has been cooking for over 200 days of gametime now.

I'm not sure my hide-until-dawn strategy is even valid anymore. I feel pretty confident that our big mistake the other night, OJ, was still being outside trying to finish repairing things when 22:00 came. And then we should have hit the tunnels and hatched up and let them rampage around. All we did was make them mad killing them off actively, so more kept coming. They were never going to stop spawning until dawn. In the long run, they ended up doing more damage for us to repair, than if we had ignored them, and we used up all our ammo; whereas if we had waited until after 4am (or maybe after 6 am) to go out clearing the base, we could have finished them off fairly easily.

But if screamers arrive, constantly hunting and screaming, do they go away at dawn as long as they aren't aggro'd? I've seem some evidence (at Deepbase1) they might, but I'm not sure I didn't have to log out to go do something else, and so then the zombies wandered off without me around (and/or the server disbanded them to respawn the zombie limit to harass other players elsewhere). Logging out to defuse a horde attack seems like cheating.

[JasonPratt]

(I was off at nieces for the weekend playing cards and watching some Star Wars movies, so I couldn't even log into Grogheads to see how things were going, much less into the server.)

[-budd-]

Me, OJ and Jake had a fun bout today with the game. Got hit with another screamer horde, i counted 3 screamers this time. The power station base up top got jacked up, the zombies were all up in our house, don't think there is a door left standing. Pretty much an all day battle, the underground stayed pretty safe. After about 12 -14 hours game time just as were about done clearing the screamer horde, another horde hits... o boy did we die :) My new sniper shacks held up pretty well.  We kept going to in to clear and get our backpacks ...well...back, think we got everything back at the end. We must of killed a couple hundred zombies if i had to guess, i could see them spawning from my sniper shack. I dont think they were going to stop spawning, so we logged off. Used up all the ammo again, most of the medical supplies and all the material to make gunpowder. The battle was so long i had time to make more ammo and go back into the fray.

I was thinking about anew underground base design. A center room with 8 tunnels out from the center. 2 tunnels, one on either side would be really long to get out of the sensed, hunted zone. The rest of the tunnels would be shorter and they all would have built sniper shacks on top of there hatches. Then tunnels connecting all the short sniper shacks, eventually a tower to be built over the center room with layered defenses going out toward the sniper shacks i.e spike ditches, walls, mines ect. We build in the general area we are once we find good ground. Keep our sleeping bags where they are while we build close by, i'll scout out some ground to start on, need a big level stretch close to trees, water, the tunneling will give us all the rock and ore we should need. We have 2 forges where we are so should be able to churn out some material.

[OJsDad]

Just logged off.  I never ventured back up, just stayed down mining and crafting.  Over 600 gun powder waiting for you Budd.  I also made some cement mix.  Coal is the one thing we could use more of.  I did find some more before I logged off.  Need to keep an eye on wood, food and water.  plenty of each right now.

Budd, make a shopping list of what you want and post here.  If I have time while traveling, and my laptop will before well enough, I'll do what I can to make it.  Perhaps we should make a new chest to place all of the items that are ready to start construction at the new base.

Oh, and isn't one of our forges on the roof, the roof that we need to go outside to get too.  Might make sense to make a second forge in the tunnels. 

Jake had a blast mining and crafting.  He says we need to make an auger.  Not sure we have all of the pieces for that.  I didn't see it in my crafting list so not sure what we need.  But if it works, then may be able to dig faster.  We made some steel pick axes to mine with.  Used them until the needed repaired.  He thought if we used a repair kit we could repair them.  I told him to save those for the guns.

All in all a great time. 

[OJsDad]

I'm not sure my hide-until-dawn strategy is even valid anymore. I feel pretty confident that our big mistake the other night, OJ, was still being outside trying to finish repairing things when 22:00 came. And then we should have hit the tunnels and hatched up and let them rampage around. All we did was make them mad killing them off actively, so more kept coming. They were never going to stop spawning until dawn. In the long run, they ended up doing more damage for us to repair, than if we had ignored them, and we used up all our ammo; whereas if we had waited until after 4am (or maybe after 6 am) to go out clearing the base, we could have finished them off fairly easily.

That's a good theory.  I was wondering something along the same lines.  If they don't detect us, do they have a need to spawn and destroy.